Commercial Runner peanut cultivars in the USA: Fatty acid composition

Though peanuts are classified as a high-fat food, they possess good proportions of fatty acids deemed as heart healthy. The fatty acid compositions of Runner peanuts were determined for commercially grown cultivars over two recent crop years. GC-FID analyses revealed that the fatty acid levels for Runner peanuts were significantly (p <0.05) different among the normal, mid-, and high-oleic peanuts investigated. Oleic acid-to-linoleic acid (O/L) ratios were found to be 1.93 +/- 0.30, 5.25 +/- 1.12, and 16.9 +/- 5.20 for normal, mid-, and high-oleic peanut lipids, respectively. Tamrun OL01 possessed a fatty acid profile characteristic of a mid-oleic cultivar. From the sample set (n = 151), mean % weights for oleic acid and linoleic acid were 52.09 +/- 2.84 and 27.38 +/- 2.60 in normal, 69.33 +/- 3.18 and 13.66 +/- 2.35 in mid-oleic, and 78.45 +/- 2.05 and 5.11 +/- 1.67 in high-oleic peanuts, respectively. Cluster analysis segregated cultivars based on fatty acids into normal, mid-, and high-oleic groups. Factorial analysis revealed that cultivar effects were significant (p <0.01) for all fatty acids, except for lignoceric acid. Cultivar effects were also highly significant (p <0.001) for O/L, IV, unsaturated/saturated fatty acid (U/S) ratio, and % saturation. Significant crop year effects were shown for palmitic, oleic, arachidic, gondoic, and lignoceric acids, as well as U/S ratio and % saturation. Healthy unsaturated fats accounted for similar to 80% in all crop years and cultivars.